It's Not Just Judges That Count

by
Laura Flanders

Dissident Voice
February 20, 2003

"Follow
the money." That's one standby in journalism. Another could be
"follow the invitations."

We've seen an example,
recently, of what can happen when the credentials of someone the Bush
administration favors were exposed to public scrutiny. But there are an awful
lot of White House cronies getting a free ride.

The Washington Post provoked
a firestorm this January, when it pointed out that the Bush administration had
nominated Jerry Thacker, a Christian conservative, to the president's council
on HIV and AIDS.

Thacker has called AIDS the
"gay plague" and homosexuality a "deathstyle." His words showed
up on the World Wide Web in various places, until they were purged. The same
day that the Post story ran, Thacker withdrew his nomination, which made more
news.

But what was missing in all
the coverage of this aborted nomination, was any word on the members who remain
on Bush's council.

As the Post revealed,
Thacker's a wacky guy with unscientific views about homosexuality, AIDS
transmission and how to preserve the public health, but he is far from alone in
the Bush administration in holding those beliefs, and he wouldn't have been
alone on the President's Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA).

Check out the list drawn up
by the group, People for the American Way, and you find that PACHA's Director
is Patricia Funderburk Ware, described as "a key advocate of
abstinence-only sex education." Ware, like many in the administration,
supports teaching kids about abstinence only, when it comes to sex, and banning
any other information about what might help protect against disease.

PACHA's co-chair is Former
Republican Rep. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a Religious Right leader with a 100
percent rating from the Christian Coalition. Coburn's on the board of Gary
Bauer's Family Research Council which also opposes comprehensive sex education.

Another member is Dr. Joe
McIlhaney, director of something called the Medical Institute in Texas. A
colleague who worked with McIlhaney told the Austin Chronicle that he refuses
even to talk about condoms, despite years of science showing that proper condom
use saves lives.

Thacker was wrong, and now
he's gone, but that's only one half of the story. The public got another half
story, January 29, when the press covered a guest at the President's State of
the Union address.

Writing about one of those
invited to sit with the first lady, The New York Times (among others) mentioned
Tonja Myles, director of an anti-drug addiction program at the Healing Place
Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Mr. Bush talked about the Healing Place in
his speech.

The religious nature of
Myles' program, said the Times, "illustrates the concerns of critics who
worry about the separation of church and state." Readers would have been
better equipped to assess those "critics" concerns had they known
that Myles testified in 2001 at the Louisiana legislature in favor of a
creationist-sponsored resolution.

The resolution, which
passed, over the objections of educators and scholars, declares that Darwin and
evolution are racist, "Ku Klux Klan thinking." Myles' record was
reported in the Lousiana Advocate.

One can hope that in the
next few weeks, the media will bring us lots of in depth coverage of those
nominees whom the Bush administration would see confirmed to the federal bench.
But when it comes to spending public money or framing the public's policy, not
only judges count.

The people whom the Bush
administration embraces are the American public's business, and we rely on
journalists to bring us all the picture, not just part of it.

Laura Flanders is author of Real
Majority, Media Minority: The Cost of Sidelining Women in Reporting (Common
Courage, 1997), and the host of Working
Assets Radio. This commentary was first published
in TomPaine.com (www.TomPaine.com)